April 06, 2014

Jersey City: Will gentrification suck out its soul

Raw, cagey, hustling. That's been the Jersey City brand, shaped by the machine politics of the Hague Administration and waves of immigrants.

The culture is so unique that I knew immediately what Joan Avagliano was all about when I began to do public relations writing assignments for The Dilenschneider Group. She was Catholic, striving, ultra hard working and knew the importance of loyalty. When my communications boutique collapsed in 2003, I conjured up the spirit of Jersey City for a comeback Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg

Now the city is being gentrified. Will that process suck out its soul. Extreme wealth and striver hunger can't co-exist. There's no white space in between for scrappers to build something out of nothing. Generations of us went from the public school system (Henry Snyder '63) to the Ivy League (Harvard Law School) to Corporate America (Chevron, Chrysler, IBM, Kraft).

Over on the Lower East Side of Manhattan artist Clayton Patterson has thrown in the towel. He is relocating to Austria because of gentrification. Here is the coverage in The New York Times. Will the current residents of Jersey City who want to do it their way leave for locations like Mexico. There entrepreneurial activity has no best practices. The hungry just jump in.

Had I not learned survival on the streets of Jersey City I couldn't have stayed in business. Those skills can atrophy amid affluence.